Hello. My name is Flavio Comim.
I teach Development Economics,
Human Development at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul in Brazil and
also at the University of Cambridge and I have worked some years for UNDP,
coordinating to human development reports to National Human Development Report.
What I would say about the HDI first is that the HDI is a very valuable too,
for public reason and it was meant to be like that.
And I think to start with because it's very simple,
everyone can remember that we are talking about health,
we are talking about education,
we are talking about a certain measure of available income and that is part of
how people would understand in very basic terms the notion or living well.
So people don't appreciate and one can see quite often
how many people have criticized the HDI because it doesn't have 10, 15, 20 dimensions.
But, in fact, I would not go as a practitioner,
I will not go in that direction saying that one of
the failures of the HDI is because it doesn't include other dimensions.
And we start with developing that idea is because
the HDI was meant to be a family of indicators so it's not simply about the main index,
but it's also about the index in which we can see some gender gaps.
It's about the index where we can see some inequalities revealed.
It's about the counterpart in terms of poverty that we had.
It's about the other family of indicators that can be used so
the HDI is a sort of structure in which we are going
for very basic notions of development and
some people have criticized the HDI for being an index for developing countries only.
But I also consider that unfair criticism because
when one sees how the poor were leaving some developed countries,
they might have the same sort of difficulties.
They might be living less than relatively rich,
they might be earning less,
they don't have as many years of study or
the same expectation of completing the same number of years of study.
The same sort of difficulties would apply.
Now where I do think that the HDI might be and then I will
start my list after having supported
the HDI for its simplicity and for the weight articulate indicators where I think that
the HDI does have some issues is that it was meant to measure capabilities.
But, what we have there?
They are just proxies for capabilities.
Why? Because when we are talking about health,
we don't know how well people are.
We have an idea of how many years one can live but one can have
a miserable life during all these years without living well, without being healthy.
So having a new index where one can talk about the quality of this living,
that will improve the HDI.
That will be closer to the notion of functioning and freedoms people
have if they don't have to depend on drugs,
if they don't have to depend on people to help
them whether they can be healthy and autonomous people.
Similarly, when one goes into education,
the problem we have is that we don't have a measure like PISA or
a measure like national evaluation systems.
They produce literacy, numeracy,
whether we have at least basic notion about
the sort of things people able to do after they go through education system.
So we will have a better idea of functioning if we were able to
appreciate what people's real abilities or skills after they go through education system.
As we have today,
it's a rough measure about how education systems work.
Of course, much better after 2010 because the review
moved beyond rough measures of literacy and simply enrollment.
So what we have today in terms of many years of study and
expectation when one joins the primary education level is much better,
but still, it's about education system.
It's not about what people can be and can do after they go through education system.
Now, when it comes to the third dimension,
the main problem we have is that not simply about
the level of income that people earn but it's how people earn their living.
There are some people who have miserable jobs.
They are invisible and they are not appreciated for the things they do.
At the same time, there are people who enjoy what they are doing.
They are people who are not simply earn a certain living,
but they are appreciated for the things they do.
They have fun. So one clear improvement when it comes to the notion of available income,
which is not simply about using that income to buy
things but it's about how individuals earn that living.
Now that goes back to the sort of things,
people to be able to be and to do and gets very close sometimes to what ILO,
called International Labor Organization, calls decent work.
A basic notion of decency is essential to see
how one can better link the notion of income to the notion of human development.
So I think repeating the thing I said,
for the three dimensions of the HDI,
I see how they are possible improvements.
They're getting it closer to the notion of capabilities.
But that is just part of the issue because
people tend to read the rankings as if they were complete rankings.
Yes, if all countries were fully comparable and we know that's not true,
we know that some countries they might be better at doing something or people there.
They might be living longer.
In other countries, they are poorer.
How can we understand these trade-offs.
Can we establish ways of comparing countries that we don't have to push,
to force for comparability?
So there are different possible ways in which we can read the HDI and I hope that,
in the future, we can move in that direction.
I also like to mention that the attempts at greening the HDI because we know
today that we should not simply understand
human development independently from what happens to nature.
Let's call nature ecosystems,
but we have to understand together because we are very much dependent on ecosystems.
Not simply as instruments of our human development,
but as intrinsic value,
as having intrinsic value themselves.
So, the main point is that we should get
not a separate dimensions for the HDI normally they would be related to CO2 emissions.
As we have seen some statistics,
we shouldn't do that as people have done in the literature before.
But we should try to see to what extent our living conditions depend on the environment,
how the environment might affect our schools,
how the environment might affect a number of years we live,
how the environment might affect our living.
But also how our living,
our schools and the fact that we are living longer might benefit the environment.
How can we find sustainable human development in the way of keeping things together?
For me, the way that we defined the dimensions,
which was the first point,
the way that we analyzed the dimensions,
which is the second point,
and the environmental issues,
these are the three main challenges for
the HDI and for how it's going to be used in the future.
I don't think it's a question of increasing the number of the dimensions of the HDI.
I think it's a question of keeping it simple.
Keep it neat for what Mahbub ul Haq meant it to be,
to be a vulgar indicator.
An indicator that everyone could use because it's
simple and could be more related to the way that people live. Thank you.
Stefan Andreas SperlichProfessor
Juan Manuel Rodriguez Poo (in Partnership with UNIGE)Professor
